In a city that feels many times to me like a small town, I always get a grin across my face when I find someone who hasn’t heard of Feast Portland yet.

“Feast, really?” I gently chide, “Feast is a citywide celebration of food and drink–it takes over the city of Portland for four days full of hands on classes, themed collaborative meals, drink panels, and pop up festivals all in the name of a great cause–ending child hunger in the US.” This past year (Feast’s sixth by the way), the organization raised more than $72,000; not to mention welcoming a record 17,948 attendees throughout the weekend. This year, the four-day festival featured 45 unique events, with 134 chefs, 56 wineries, 17 breweries, 11 artisans, and 13 distilleries. Since its inception in 2012, Feast has raised over $370,000–no easy feat.

This year I wanted to focus a little more on sharing some of the amazing personalities that participate in Feast–so for the first time, I tried to get more shots of people, in addition to many drool-worthy food shots. This post is all about the Grand Tasting and Drink Tanks 😀

The Grand Tasting is a collection of food and drink for the sampling. Highlights for me this year included Wild Hawaiian Antelope from Nicky USA and Doug Adams, cheese from the Oregon Cheese Guild, and wine–all the wine, really, was marvelous.

Drink Tanks consist of in depth discussion and guided tastings through a specific beverage style. I made it to an educational pilsner talk with a four person industry panel and tasted 6 different examples of pilsners. This class was complete with a very Portland disruption by the Unipiper. If you’ve not heard of the Unipiper, you can learn more about him here.